Description

INKS updates pinball for a new generation. It combines the joy of pinball with skilful tactical challenges, and allows you to create wondrous works of art as the ball smashes around the canvas.

Blocks of colour burst like beautiful fireworks across the surface, building up in vivid layers and recording a visual history of your game as you perfect your score.

History

About

Luke Whittaker, co-founder and creative director of State of Play, says that inspiration goes back their BAFTA winning iOS game Lumino City: “We hand built a real physical pinball table for one of the puzzles. We had such a great time with it and were so pleased with the result that we wanted to do more with the idea."

Pinball is incredibly popular, but that in its old form it's also intimidating for a mass audience. "We love the game and spend evenings at London arcades like the Pipeline and The Four Quarters playing on old tables.” says Luke. "But they’re effectively hardcore gaming. Until now pinball video games have always just copied physical tables.” Not so with INKS he says, "We wanted to bring the core pleasure of the experience to everyone, and we knew we could make it beautiful."

INKS updates pinball for a new generation and a new technology. It combines the joy of pinball with skilful puzzles, and allows you to create wondrous works of art by bursting ink across the canvas. With hundreds of levels which streamline gameplay into elegant small challenges then gradually increase the difficulty, the experience becomes one for everyone to enjoy.

As you play INKS the ball smashes along the walls, blocks of colour burst like beautiful fireworks across the surface, building up in vivid layers and recording a visual history of your gameplay as you perfect your score.

Inspired by artists like Miro, Matisse, Jackson Pollock and Bridget Riley, each table becomes a unique work of art in its own right, sculpted by the player as they fire an ink covered ball around the canvas. The player is encouraged to share their final work of art on social media with the iOS share function. They can even print them out if they like - with the story of their perfect game literally drawn on the canvas in front of them, something to be proud of and share.
With State of Play’s creative flare and skill at crafting beautifully elegant gameplay, INKS offers something new to the mobile marketplace: art and gameplay as one, for everyone.

How it was made

State of Play used unusual tools to bring the game to life. Concept art was initially done by splatting Indian ink onto watercolour paper, and an iPad Pro was extensively during production. Firstly for concept art and then for level design, using ProCreate and the Apple pencil. Game designer Steffan Glynn would transfer these to Unity to work up into levels to test, and return to the drawing board to refine them.and figure out the fascinating mechanisms that power this unique world.